Inside the new and improved Penn Station
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A view of the entrance of the Moynihan Train Hall of Penn Station on its opening day on Jan. 1, 2021 in New York City. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Remember the grungy escalators at New York's Pennsylvania Station that bear you down to the even-grungier plaza where you can catch trains from Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad? They're still there.
Yes, but: So is this splendid new way to reach those trains. The Daniel Patrick Moynihan Train Hall opened Jan. 1, the culmination of three years' construction, $1.6 billion, and decades of Sturm und Drang over the endlessly flagellated decision in the 1960s to knock down the original Penn Station.
- "The destruction of the station was a turning point in New York’s civic life," the New York Times notes. "It prompted a fierce backlash among defenders of the city’s architectural heritage, the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and renewed efforts to protect Grand Central Terminal."
The bottom line: Moynihan Train Hall is actually adjacent to Penn Station — it's located across Eighth Avenue, in the James A. Farley Building, where the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested moving the entire rail station in what seemed like a farfetched idea in the 1990s.
